Monthly Archives: October 2013

In my years as a Health Librarian no subject has struck fear into the hearts of colleagues and library users alike than Critical Appraisal! (For those of you who don’t know Critical Appraisal is reading a Journal article critically to decide whether the article, or more particularly the research it describes, are of value both generally to the relevant field of medicine and to you in particular).

Last week (it’s been a busy few weeks it’s taken me until now to get around to writing about it!) I went on a Librarian’s Training Day on the subject of Critical Appraisal. Because I’m relatively new to my training role I have no previous experience of Critical Appraisal, either teaching it or using it. For my Masters dissertation I was looking for Case Studies and Editorials so ‘academic’ value wasn’t something I appraised articles for! My colleagues who attended with me were all rather nervous of the subject, but most admit they don’t use their Critical Appraisal skills very often and are therefore out of practice. So I was a bit nervous about what to expect!

The tutor, Michelle Maden from Edge Hill University, was fantastic! She knew that most of us were a bit nervous so she started us with the scary bit first – the dreaded statistics! When the article authors are talking about trials they present lots of figures to back up there findings, so in order to appraise an article (or trial) you need to be able to understand the principles of what these figures are saying. There were a few figures which Michelle pointed out we don’t have to know how it’s calculated, we just have to know how to read it (and they are typically compared to something so you just have to know what you’re comparing it to!)

Michelle took us through it all in very easy steps (if anyone is interested in me writing a summary article of Critical Appraisal, let me know and I will!) The main thing I took out from the session though is that the session was repeatable. If someone were to ask me for Critical Appraisal Training I wouldn’t be afraid to have a go or to try and answer a question. Don’t get me wrong the first time I teach a Critical Appraisal session I’ll want my Line Manager there as back up, but I’m no longer scared to give it a go, because now I know what I’m talking about!!

The day also gave me a chance to have a nosey round someone else’s library (Stafford Hospital) which I love doing and although I didn’t get a chance to take pictures this time, I did get a great idea for bookmarks with QR Codes on them to direct people to the NICE and BNF smartphone apps!

Earlier this week I ran an in-house training session on Twitter and QR codes as part of our Library Assistant’s Training Day – I was kind of excited; this was the first time I’ve attended as a presenter, not trainee!

We ran the sessions as short 15 minutes taster sessions on a variety of topics, which also included augmented reality – using Aurasma – Prezi, LibraryThing, Pinterest and Flickr. I only really covered the basics, but for most of the library assistants this was ideal; many had never used Twitter before and most were only vaguely familiar with QR codes, some that had seen them in the library didn’t know how easy they are to create!

Twitter

We planned some practical demonstrations of Twitter on the day – using the #shelibmobile hashtag. This has the added benefit that I could use it to demonstrate the search function – it helped that two of the librarians who weren’t attending (covering the libraries) were tweeting (despite one trying to claim he was rushed off his feet within minutes of me spotting a tweet from him!). I would have liked to have demonstrated a Twitter Wall like the one I saw at the CILIP WM day in Feb, but for the number of Tweets we sent it wasn’t necessary – maybe that’s something to build on for a future training event?

We mostly use Twitter for marketing/promotion – I’m curious as to how other Libraries (particularly Health Libraries) use Twitter although I know potential uses include:

Marketing/Promotion

conversations with users – not just problem-solving/troubleshooting!

conversations with stakeholders and other local libraries

QR Codes

I wanted to show off the versatility of QR Codes, so I put together some examples of different uses:

I am a Health Librarian, MSc Graduate, active CILIP member as well as a Brownie Leader and Swimming Teacher...

I have been working in Health Libraries for just over 5 years, having completed my CILIP Certification (ACLIP) a few years ago and I am just starting to work on my CILIP Chartership (MCLIP), which has already given me a chance to meet new people and visit other libraries across the West Midlands, not least in my role on the committee of the CILIP West Midlands Member Network. My previous library work has included voluntary work in my school library and in my local public library. I started this blog to take part in the 23 Things CPD, but have since blogged about other things too.